CEN14LA147 · Air Tractor Inc AT 602
Richard Flying Service Air Tractor Inc AT 602 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) while maneuvering
From Rayne, LA (no airport) to Rayne, LA (no airport)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN14LA147
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Air Tractor Inc AT 602
- Aircraft type
- Air Tractor AT-602
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N5035R
- Operator
- Richard Flying Service
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Rayne, LA (no airport)To Rayne, LA (no airport)
- Aircraft age
- About 17 years (built 1997)
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 137: Agricultural
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- Maneuvering · low-altitude flying
- Defining eventThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Loss of engine power (total)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that, during an agricultural application flight, the engine began to surge and lose power and that the propeller did not autofeather and appeared to be locked up. He made a forced landing to an open field, and the airplane subsequently collided with trees. The pilot said he thought the airplane had plenty of fuel because he usually flew the airplane for 2 hours as recorded on the Hobbs meter before it needed more fuel but that he had only flown for 0.8 hour since fueling the airplane. However, he later stated that the airplane was starved of fuel and that he should have known the engine fuel burn and the airplane fuel capacity and should have checked the fuel during preflight. No fuel was found in the fuel tanks, no fuel leaks were found, and no fuel was found on the ground. Upon application of electrical power, the fuel gauge read "0," and the "low fuel" annunciator light illuminated. Disassembly and examination of the engine revealed no mechanical anomalies that would have caused the engine to lose power.
Probable cause
The pilot’s improper preflight inspection and in-flight fuel planning, which resulted in a total loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN14LA147
- Event ID
- 20140222X85713
- Case number
- CEN14LA147
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 38eac6964812273c060fa089103a7b2f6e4e49f952c50a73b204efedd7bf8f56; retrieved 2026-09-15T23:20:06.870Z.